7° PLACE AND FIELD NAMES OF DERBYSHIRE. 
correct it need not disconnect it with the bird in question, for 
both owl and howl are merely past participles of the verb gydan, 
ululare, to yell.* 
CROWDEN and CROWCHINE are equally significant of the crow. 
The heron or hern serves as a suffix to three names in the Peak 
district, HERNSTONE, HERNSIDE, and HERNMORE; it is also 
found in HeRNE CLosE (T.C., Calow). This bird is occasionally 
seen in the county. Another species of the same order, now 
extinct throughout the country, is the crane. This bird was a 
favourite dish of the Anglo-Saxons. It was known in Kent till 
the ninth century ; it abounded in the mountains of Derbyshire 
and Wales during the tenth century, and as late as the seventeenth 
it was met with in the fens of Lincoln and in parts of Scotland. 
YELDERSLEY, YELT Farm (Uttoxeter), and YELD PLacE (Oak- 
erthorpe) are derived from ye/do, the crane.t 
Swanwick, as was remarked in a previous chapter, is probably 
connected with Sweyn, the Danish King; but there is no reason 
to doubt that Swanpanks (T.C., Stretton), the name of some 
fields on the verge of the Amber, and Swan CLosE (T.C., 
Kniveton), refer to the bird itself. No bird was preserved with 
greater strictness in the middle ages The simple stealing of an 
egg was punished by imprisonment for a year and a day, in 
addition to a fine at the king’s pleasure. In consequence of this 
great severity there was scarcely a brook of any reasonable 
dimensions that was not tenanted by swans. Ancient records 
speak of as many as thirty-one on a single manor. ¢ 
On the left bank of the Derwent, just above Milford, is a mill 
that is still called Hoprinc MIL, and several of the adjacent fields 
Hoppinc meadows. ‘The name Swanley, by which the fields on 
the opposite bank are designated, at once assists us to the right 
derivation. ‘‘ Swan-hopping ” was the old name for the annual 
custom of marking these birds on their bills, in order that those 
belonging to the king, and to the respective lords of the manor, 
* Horne Tooke, Diversions of Purley, vol. ii. p. 263. 
+ Whitaker, Hzst. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 81. 
t Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, p. 36, etc. 
